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6.28.2015

Building a modern farmhouse dining table

I was seeing a trend on home blogs of building your own farmhouse dining table. I like the idea of saving money and building your own awesome dining table so we decided to build one for ourselves too. Like a lot of people we used ana-white.com for free easy awesome plans. I am now addicted to Ana's website. I want to build everything in our house from scratch but my husband doesn't share the same feeling.

We had a smaller table with 4 chairs that didn't feel right for our small eat in kitchen which is our only eating space in our home. So we sold it on craigslist and used the money to buy the supplies for our new table.

We are in love with our new table and a little obsessed. We are also
very proud of ourselves for building our own super sturdy, awesome,
incredibly beautiful, obsessively gorgeous, makes me wanna clean it
everyday modern family farmhouse dining table ( I told you I was obsessed). We used the shopping and
cutting list provided in Ana's website and then followed the instructions to a T.

We bought mini hand held Kreg jig. We had never used one before but it was easy to use and I love that it hides all the screws under the table top. We also had all of our lumber cut at Home Depot.

We then sanded the whole table but I don't have any pictures of that part of the process. We taped and covered the whole kitchen with plastic because we sanded it inside the house, crazy I know. We started with 60 grit rough sanding paper, then worked our way to 180 grit medium sand paper and all the way down to 220 grit fine sanding paper. We finished the table with wood conditioner, one thick coat of Rustoleum's Dark Kona stain applied with foam brushes. We let it sit for 10 to 15 minutes and wiped out the excess with a cheese cloth. We used 3 coats of Minwax water based polycrylic in satin finish for the top coat. And that's it. She's a beauty.

And here she is with the chairs we bought through Craigslist. The chairs are waiting to be painted, I'm thinking glossy white or some other bright pop of color, not sure yet.

I'm in love, it's not perfect but it's not supposed to be. It's bigger that our old table but the smaller chairs really help to make it feel alot more spacious than before. It's been about 4 months since we built it and we couldn't be happier with our table, we are totally in love.

Hi Tiffany, The first few months I didn't mind vacuuming and cleaning the groves almost everyday but it began to get annoying especially after the kids would spill milk and other sticky foods would get stuck in the crevices. We ended up taking the table apart and using a temporary replacement. I love the table so much we want to rebuild it but taking a different approach to not have this problem again. I would recommend cutting off about 1/4" off each edge because 2x6's have rounded edges or using a lot of wood filler in between the cracks. Just remember that you will need to adjust the measurements if you cut the edges and if you are planning on staining it you need to get stainable filler and test it first because not all fillers stain well. But aside from that one issue we really loved the table, it was very strong and sturdy and easy to build. I hope this helps, good luck! Lilly

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Hi I'm Lilly! I looove decorating and making new creations whether it's painting or building furniture pieces and crafting. I redesign and build furniture in my spare time. I also enjoy making our house a beautiful and functional home for my family. With the help of Pinterest (lots of Pinterest), interior design books and blogs I hope to accomplish my home goals and share them here!